Earnings Labs

IAC InterActive Corp. (IAC)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 30, 2014

$44.73

+1.52%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-3.92%

1 Week

-8.73%

1 Month

-0.48%

vs S&P

-2.37%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone, and welcome to the IAC Reports Q2 2014 Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. And at this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jeff Kip, Executive Vice President and CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Jeff Kip

Management

Thanks, operator. Welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings call. With me today is Grég Blatt, Chairman of the Match Group and Joey Levin, CEO of our Search & Applications segment. Before we get into our results, outlook and general business overview, I’d like to remind you that during this call, we may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward-looking statements typically may be preceded by words such as we expect, we believe, we anticipate or similar statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Some of these risks have been set forth in our second quarter 2014 press release and our periodic reports filed with the SEC. We’ll also discuss certain non-GAAP measures, which, as a reminder include adjusted EBITDA, which we will refer to today’s EBITDA for simplicity. I’ll refer you to our press release in the Investor Relations section of our website for all comparable GAAP measures and full reconciliations for all material non-GAAP measures. Before we get into the businesses, I’d like to just note that we announced today that we’re increasing our quarterly dividend by $0.10 or more than 40% from $0.24 to $0.34 a share based on our confidence and our strong cash flows going forward, continuing our track record of returning capital to shareholders. With that introduction, let me turn it over to Grég to discuss the Match Group, then Joey will discuss the Search & Applications segment and I’ll wrap up with a few comments on our Media and eCommerce businesses. Grég? Grég Blatt: Hi Kip, good morning everybody. Second quarter was another phenomenal quarter for our Dating business in terms of overall user growth, up more than 60% year-over-year in MAUs reinforcing our long-term expectations for…

Joey Levin

CEO

Thanks Grég. We delivered EBITDA for the quarter up nicely sequentially and narrowed the year-on-year decline from last quarter, but we have two specific issues to work through in the back half of this year in our applications business. The first is Chrome and the second is the marketplace for B2B applications, I’ll start with Chrome. Last week, Google released a new version of the Chrome browser which we expect will have an adverse impact on applications. As you know, reacting to these kinds of browser and platform changes is part of the business and from a technical perspective we’ve made most of the necessary modifications to be compatible with the new version and the latest Chrome web-store requirements. And have been reviewed by Google in the context of our broader commercial relationship. However, the changes will reduce the near-term revenue per offer for Chrome extensions and we’ve reduced our forecast for the remainder of the year to reflect the changes. We’ve managed this sort of transition with new versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox before. And based on our experience with other major browsers, we believe the impact will be more pronounced initially and then settle over time as the marketplace suggests and we optimize accordingly. We should transition by the end of the year as the tale on the old Chrome extensions lines up and we start to ramp distribution of the revised products. On B2B applications, the market remains tough competitively with some of our largest distribution partners posting sequential declines which outweigh the new business we’re bringing in. Some of those declines relate directly to the market dynamics where our partners lost distribution to competitors supported by more aggressive monetization and some issues are partner specific. We will continue to manage the business for the long-term…

Jeff Kip

Management

Thanks Joey. Revenue, in the Media and eCommerce segments were together down 16% versus last year, with the total EBITDA loss of approximately $4 million in the quarter. The segment decline was driven by the presence in the prior year of CityGrid revenue in local and Newsweek revenue in media. On an apples-to-apples basis, the two segments would have grown revenue, although total revenue was lower than expected driven by the slippage of Electus shows out of the quarter. We expect solid revenue growth year-over-year in both the third and the fourth quarters given that CityGrid revenue and in part news week revenue will not be included in the prior year. We also again expected comparable combined low single-digit millions of EBITDA investment in both the third and fourth quarters. As you know, we’ve got several businesses in the Media and eCommerce segments which we’re excited about. In the Media segment, Vimeo enjoyed another strong quarter of growth with nearly 60% growth in ComScore monthly unique viewers and nearly 50% growth in revenue. Vimeo also reached 0.5 million subscribers in early July, a real milestone. The strong momentum in the Vimeo on-demand business has continued as our catalog in videos and films has now grown to 11,000 strong and our monthly revenue run rate for that business is up nearly 50% sequentially from the first quarter. Additionally, in media, we continue to see strong traffic growth of both the Daily Beast and CollegeHumor where monthly unique were up approximately 30% and 35% respectively. In the eCommerce segment, home advisor had a second consecutive quarter of accelerating double-digit revenue growth. The business had its strongest performance in both total revenue and total service requests ever in the second quarter with paying service providers also up 20% and service requests up solidly for the second quarter were up with organic service requests up over 20% year-on-year. With that, we’ll take your questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We’ll hear first from Jason Helfstein, Oppenheimer. Jason Helfstein – Oppenheimer: Hi, thanks. Grég, I just wanted to dig in a little more into the international slowdown. So, specifically, internationally would you say you’re seeing more competition from paid services, is it other free services or are you potentially cannibalizing yourself. And then, I guess just overall, it does seem like we’re seeing that the space more competitive. You did talk about an acquisition you did in Germany you think helps your positioning. Just wondering if you could go into a little more detail about that? Thanks. Grég Blatt: Sure. I actually think, I don’t think this space is more competitive than it’s been. I think the – if you exclude Tinder for a second, there hasn’t really been any meaningful movement in the space in a long time. We do a survey every year, probably the biggest single survey anywhere that sort of looked at all the stuff but there are not a lot of publicly available information. Business the big – eHarmony, plenty of fast, sort of being domestically in some part internationally sort of big players continue to be sort of big. No one knew of any size that’s come on in the market in a long time. In the U.S. you get Tinder and OkCupid that have grown a lot over the last few years, and that certainly impacts the landscape, we happen to own both of them, which is good. But other than that there hasn’t really been a lot of movement. And Europe is a big place and each market is different. But again, I would say Tinder is the single biggest sort of change there, recently there was Badoo but that made a big push from three plus years ago and then has slowed. There are couple of players in a couple of markets. But in general, again, other than Tinder, which does have an impact but it’s primarily at a young demographic that our traditional sites don’t – it doesn’t make up a big part of their business. The competition really hasn’t changed much. I think part of it is, in Europe I think there is media inflation which I don’t think is sort of – is limited to the dating marketing. Meaning, I don’t think that’s a reflection of competition in dating, I think it’s a reflection of an aggregation of media markets both online and offline that have just increased the pricing. But I really don’t – we looked pretty hard at this and I don’t think there is any meaningful change in the landscape other than Tinder. Jason Helfstein – Oppenheimer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Moving on to Ross Sandler, Deutsche Bank. Deepak Mathivanan – Deutsche Bank: Hi, guys, thanks. This is Deepak actually for Ross. Just wanted to follow-up on that, I actually have two questions, one on Match and then generally about the dividends. First on the Match Group. So, I mean, I wanted to ask a little bit about the strategy around mobile apps. I think unlike in the desktop world, kind of like in the mobile apps, the ecosystem is highly fragmented. Like you see new players like Hinge pretty much growing pretty rapidly. And how would you think about this, would you think about more acquisitions or do you have any strategy to organically build more apps, kind of like gather different needs. And then secondly, I think you increased dividends by 40% this quarter. I mean, how do you think about the return in terms of, I don’t think there was any buybacks. Would you think of returns going forward in terms of like increasing dividends or what’s the philosophy there? Thanks. Grég Blatt: Yes, I think again, with the mobile app, Tinder has grown and become very significant. Hinge is still a lovely app, I’m not missing it, but it’s – user growth, it’s not sort of a meaningful thing on the overall marketplace. And I think the mobile store, people thought back when Facebook came that it would sort of enable all these new competitors just sort of grow rapidly. And there were moments where it did. But in general, it just doesn’t change the landscape. And I don’t think there is anything inherent about mobile that changes that – meaning, you still need to have a great product and a great brand. And that’s what Tinder has done. Nothing else in the mobile world has been around for a few years now nothing has caught on and gained meaningful distribution. I’m not saying it can’t happen, every few years something grows and becomes big. But I don’t really see the landscape as being meaningfully different. In some ways it’s easier because if you can afford to spend money on acquisition, that sort of drives you up in the app store which in turn sort of drives. So we think that – we look at the native app world as an opportunity. Again, we didn’t play aggressively in our traditional brand early. But you look at OkCupid’s growth there and Twoo’s growth there and Tinder’s growth there and it’s great. But I don’t think it’s because of the app store effectively sort of allows for more rapid distribution or a greater democracy. Still that’s a great product and if you can put paid money behind it, you have huge advantages. So, again we’re focused on it but I don’t see it as a meaningful change in the competitive landscape.

Jeff Kip

Management

In terms of your question on returns of capital. We instituted the dividend nearly three years ago. We doubled it after its first three quarters. And at the time it went from 1% to 2% yield. We didn’t raise it last year and so we’re just bringing it up now. We think increasing dividend is a good part of our capital return strategy. We also think opportunistic share buybacks are good part of capital return strategy. So, our position on both really hasn’t changed. The dividend increase this time brings again the yield up to around 2%, not that that’s a perfect benchmark. But I think we think that we’ll probably steadily increase it over time. But we’ll do these things opportunistically. Deepak Mathivanan – Deutsche Bank: Great. If I can just squeeze in one more. On the website, I don’t think you called out anything related to Google Panda. But there is a lot of noise during the quarter in terms of Ask traffic. Do you have any comment, do you see any impact? Thanks.

Jeff Kip

Management

It was relatively small impact from Panda. I think the – it’s actually – we have for a long time I think About.com before we owned it. And even for the first, we owned it, everyone sort of lived in fear of these algorithm updates from Google and probably with good reason given the history. We’re now at the point where our content is good. And so when these algorithm updates happen, they generally and this one in particular did generally affirm our strategy which is where we know we have sort of weak outdated content, that’s going to get removed. And where we have good updated high quality content that’s going to get rewarded, and we saw that in this most recent update. So it had a small impact on some small areas of Ask, actually small areas of Dictionary and About.com netted up in this update. So, we’re sort of at the point now where we look forward to these because I think that they’re generally rewarding where we’re investing in the content.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll hear next from John Blackledge, Cowen & Company. John Blackledge – Cowen & Company: Great, thanks. I have a couple of questions on Tinder and Match. So, for Tinder, you mentioned miles increased 140% year-over-year, did that accelerate from 1Q ‘14 levels? And then, will you start to monetize Tinder in 3Q or 4Q, and can you describe how you expect to monetize the business and we’ll be advertising and our premium type of offerings? And then, also on Match, you mentioned miles grew 60% year-over-year. What was the total number of miles? I think in the fourth quarter of ‘13 you said Match had 30 million miles. And I’m wondering if that growth accelerated from 1Q levels? Thank you. Grég Blatt: The Tinder number was actually not a year-over-year number, it’s actually year-to-date so, much greater than year-over-year. From December through now, and they used it up 140% at Tinder. I wouldn’t say that I don’t want to naturally say its accelerating, it’s accelerated – it bounces around a little bit, there is seasonality, there are events there is PR etcetera. June over, we don’t have the July numbers fully in yet but the June over May happen to grow 2x May over April, I’m not saying that’s an overall trend of acceleration. But I’m saying it sort of bounces around and still growing very strong. In terms of the overall MAU number, I imagine we did give that out at some point. I don’t think we’re currently giving that out on aggregate basis but year-over-year, for in total, we’re up 60% versus Q2 last year. And given the extensive growth of Tinder I think on an overall basis that is accelerating. I think last quarter, we said that MAU growth was around 50%, I think…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Moving on to Mark Mahaney, RBC Capital Markets. Mark Mahaney – RBC Capital Markets: Thanks, two questions. Could you provide a little detail on the write-down, I think one of those part of that was due to area over – to the area. And then on the home advisor part of the business and the acceleration and the improvement that you’re seeing in service request, any more color as to why that’s occurring? Is it a matter of easing comps or they are fundamental improvements and I think there are that are driving them? Thank you.

Jeff Kip

Management

First on the write-off, there is, about five different investments, a few of them small, a couple of them larger areas, the largest in that write-down. Secondly, on home advisor, I think you’re looking at two things. One, we rebranded last year, we saw dip in traffic in monetization, in particular, in the first couple of quarters. So we do have some good compares. I think secondly, our marketing has been very effective returning on a lifetime value basis, nearly couple of hundred percent so far. So that’s doing very well. And so we’re seeing very good traction with the brand. We think we have rising satisfaction score from that business as nice momentum. Mark Mahaney – RBC Capital Markets: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Moving on to Heath Terry, Goldman Sachs. Heath Terry – Goldman Sachs: Great, thanks. I was just wondering if you could maybe just $75 million in EBITDA for tenders of really interesting number. And I think implies a level of monetization that we don’t normally see at or haven’t seen at social networks. So, curious kind of what’s involved, I know you don’t want to talk about margins but sort of what’s involved from a revenue perspective in being able to get to that kind of EBITDA or from a CPM perspective given that our ad-load perspective, some of the metrics that you’re thinking about that’s going into the math behind that number? And then, if you can just – the contribution from the acquisitions on the O&O side, if you can give us any sort of sense of what growth would have been like without those acquisitions that would be interesting? Grég Blatt: Was the second part of that a Match question or a Search question? Heath Terry – Goldman Sachs: Sorry, that was more of a Search question, but I mean, and I know the acquisitions within Match have been relatively small but to the extent you want to provide some clarity on that? Grég Blatt: Yes, I don’t think there is anything meaningful on the Match side, so, I just tried to clarify that. I think as I pointed out, I think that OkCupid, I mean, sorry, Tinder, will monetize differently than a traditional – in a traditional social network. The better now I think is either a free-to-communicate dating product like OkCupid or a game, where there will be a lot of direct monetization in which a small number of the users will pay a fair amount for certain things. If you look at…

Jeff Kip

Management

In terms of the revenue question, and I think that our – we’ve obviously had declined based on the changes in Google policy, downloadable applications guidelines etcetera. I think we’re run-rating a kind of a level we’ve been at the last couple of quarters, we’re just kind of low-double digits in those businesses, excluding the acquisitions. Heath Terry – Goldman Sachs: Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll hear next from Brian Fitzgerald, Jefferies. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Thanks. Jeff, Vimeo had nice growth in revenues and subs. Can you maybe give us a little more granularity on how you’re feeling about the engagement there? Anything around time spent or likes or follows or uploads, maybe even what you’re seeing in terms of upgrades plus pro or the subscription breaks there? And then, again, on Vimeo, can you give us a growth rate on that 11,000 videos in the library? Thanks.

Jeff Kip

Management

Look, the videos in the library are up something like 50% quarter-over-quarter on the number we gave last quarter. Look, we’re feeling very good about engagement at Vimeo. I think views are growing a lot faster even than unique visitors so that’s great. And that’s even better when you consider that mobile unique visitors have been driving a lot of the growth, doubling year-over-year essentially the whole time. And you naturally and any of these businesses, get somewhat lower engagement in the mobile form factor and usage pattern. So I think yes, we’re very happy with engagement. We’re very happy with the Vimeo-on-demand business. Was there another part of your question that I missed? Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: No, maybe you have been giving breaks on basic plus or pro right?

Jeff Kip

Management

No, we haven’t been breaking that down. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Okay. And then maybe one quick on one, still on Media on the electives, any particular point driving the project shifts, do you have any sense of when they will hit? Thanks.

Jeff Kip

Management

Really that shows we’re just moving into this deck in half of the year. It’s no particular thing, I think it’s just show businesses they say these things sometimes move, a number of episodes change. But again, we’re feeling very good about the shows and the production and the pipeline in that business. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Very good, thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Moving on to Peter Stabler, Wells Fargo Securities. Peter Stabler – Wells Fargo Securities: Good morning, thanks for taking the question. A quick one for Grég, you mentioned a bit of a pivot tour apps away from mobile web. Just wondering if that could have a long-term impact on margins for the segment as a whole? Thanks very much. Grég Blatt: Yes. Look, I think that we’ve certainly built the app monetization has – certainly has a fee associated with it. And we built that into our thinking as we’ve said, we expect long-term margin expansion. I think that you’ve got to look at it sort of as a pocket of distribution. I don’t think it’s every going to be sort of 100% of the business. But as you get better at app store delivery, our app store discovery and as you optimize your paid spending, you should be able to actually maintain your cost of acquisition, meaning, some ways we view it, we view it like a distribution deal that we might do with Yahoo or that we might do with MSN or AOL. And we’ve always built in those sort of call them rev shares. And so, we think that obviously it’s an incremental expense that affects margin. But in the overall mix of the things that drive acquisition, we still believe that margin overall will expand. Peter Stabler – Wells Fargo Securities: Very helpful, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Moving to Eric Sheridan, UBS. Eric Sheridan – UBS: Thanks for taking the questions. I think two for Grég. Grég, you highlighted marketing channels and that sort of turning the dial up on trading dollars to work on marketing to drive growth. Maybe you can help us understand some of the channels you are putting money to work and sort of what you see early days, some sort of the ROIs of the channels. I know that might accelerate the shift to mobile? And then also Grég, Match group continues to sort of allocate incremental capital to sort of deep and certain properties or broaden out your geographic focus. Maybe I wanted to understand about capital allocation within the Match Group and how you think about the M&A landscape, long-term. Thanks. Grég Blatt: Great. Your first question, maybe you could – I wasn’t quite sure I caught the beginning of it, meaning, you were saying we’re stepping. Just could you repeat the first part of it, I’m sorry. Eric Sheridan – UBS: No problem. As you increase more trading dollars to drive growth, I was curious what channels you are allocating dollars for marketing. And so what the ROI you might be seeing from those channels and it might mean to the shift to mobile long-term? Grég Blatt: Okay. We’re always shifting dollars around, I mean, when I first got involved in the business really back into ‘08, we built the business on the back of distribution deals with MSN and AOL and then started layering TV on top of that. And those deals were gone, we were placed with the Yahoo deal, that deal is gone. Facebook is now sort of meaningful, although much smaller than those deals were in terms of our overall thing. I think…

Jeff Kip

Management

And we’ll take one more question operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll hear our final question from Nat Schindler, Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Nat Schindler – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Yes, hi, thank you for taking my question. Two things, one, can you go into a little bit about Tinder’s growth recently and the exceptional growth in June. Was that mostly – was there a lot of that outside the U.S. particularly World Cup related? And how you’ve seen that and whether or not that is continuing post World Cup. Additionally, can you – is there – are there any structural or legal issues precluding you from doing buybacks which you have traditionally done with pullback from the last two quarters?

Jeff Kip

Management

Let me just address the buyback question. I think we do buybacks opportunistically with any public company there could be reasons or not at any given time. And obviously you wouldn’t comment on them during before after the back. So we have quarters where we do a lot of buyback and we have some quarters where we don’t do any. Grég Blatt: Yes, on your – I’m just doing some quick math here so give me one second. No, the growth, the June over May growth was effectively the same domestically as it was globally but there was not a big difference there. As I said, the growth in June over May versus May over April, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a trend. What I’m saying, it bounces around, meaning, I don’t think it was exceptional either. Some months have just different bumps and if I look at this, I’m just eyeballing March was a big month. So, I think it bounces around. I think we were looking at the metrics in July earlier to make sure that sort of trends were consistent with those, overall 140%-ish growth rate. And I think that they are, but I don’t think there is anything, I’m planning acceleration but I don’t think there is deceleration either. It’s a nice steady, month-over-month growth rate with phenomenal year-over-year growth rates. And we’re feeling really good about it. Nat Schindler – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Great, thank you.

Jeff Kip

Management

Thanks everybody. Let us know if you have any questions. Have a great day. Grég Blatt: Bye-bye now.

Operator

Operator

And thank you. That does conclude today’s presentation. Thank you for your participation.